It would work until the polar bear population collapses in a couple generations due to inbreeding.
And once they eat all the penguins and starve
St. Matthew Island with polar bears instead of reindeer.
Neal Stephenson book, Termination Shock.
Then you have a penguin population crisis
Tbf we already have that due to glacier melt
4 million buy a freight boat
I work in supply chain but not a complete expert but the smallest cheapest working order freight ship I can find for sale is this one for $6MM, doesn’t include licensing, crew, insurance and the dreyage/accessorial on live polar bears is gonna cost you big
https://petronav.net/container-ships-for-sale/container-adilia-i-ex-e-r-auckland
Does it really need to be a big container ship?
Didn’t people transport stuff in smaller boats back in the day?
(You still make a valid point though)
they did specify freight! although getting The Cutty Sark back in working order is probably even more costly.
Idk, polar bears are really heavy, and it takes a long time to get from one end of the planet to the other, so you want something secure to store the bears in. That means a bigger ship that can handle angry bears hurling themselves at the walls of their cage, because they will wake up during the journey, and they won’t be happy.
I think the penguins would learn to just swim away, and the bears would starve since they would need to expend a lot of effort for a small bird versus the calorie-dense seals they’re used to.
To be fair, some penguins aren’t exactly small
That is a king penguin, not even the tallest subspecies (emperors are taller), but what you’re looking at is an optical illusion because the penguin is much closer to the camera than the humans.
plenty of polar bears eat salmon
Polar or grizzly bears… not sure salmon roams the north regions without rivers.
Polar bears can fish (in this video they’re catching char, which is closely related to salmon), they’re just not used to it.
If they can eat fish, they can probably figure out penguins as well, which honestly aren’t too different from seals (slow on land, fast in the water).
the north regions have rivers, and bluberrys; both of which are natural food sources.
They’d need to ambush the flock when they were on land, ensuring they could corner several before the penguins make it to water
This reminds me of a friend that once proposed that if we really wanted to mess with Europe we could release a few packs of coyotes
Etymologists crying and shaking right now at the thought of Antarctica (meaning: without bears) gaining the one animal it’s not supposed to have
I’m not saying this will definitely reverse the Earth’s polarity and doom all life on earth, but do we really want to take that chance?!
I read that as entomologist for a second and was really confused
Figured it had something to do with fleas
I was really hoping OP wanted to drop the polar bears on a tropical island. For science.
They’d probably just turn back into grizzlies eventually.
only if you can find some weird magnetic anomaly and plane crash survivors
Antarctica is generally colder than the Arctic. They would almost certainly be stuck along the coastlines of Antarctica like the penguins are, since the interior average temperatures rival the coldest ones ever recorded in the Arctic. They should be fine there, but then that means they have a very limited distribution and that penguins and seals consequently are always forced to share an environment with the polar bears. Because they’re not used to the polar bears, their populations would likely be destroyed, leaving the polar bears to starve. Unlike in the Arctic, too, they would have nowhere to retreat if their food supply ran out. Outward is hundreds of kilometers of ocean, and inward is hundreds of kilometers of unsurvivable desert.
they would have nowhere to retreat if their food supply ran out.
Um. Hello? There are scientists there.
Which means scientific papers, then tourists, then garbage and a symbiotic relationship, then the eventual domestication of polar bears.
Not, you know, the international scientific community treating scientists like cats.Idk, I think polar bears would domesticate the scientists before scientists domesticated the polar bears.
“Return Eenie or we feed another physicist to the bears. We know you fuckers took him.”
You may find you struggle with step 1.
Zoos tend to struggle with Step 7 and they have far better conditions than a beat up converted freighter
I’ve been trying to do step one for years. But my bastard relatives refuse to die, and also refuse to be rich. Selfish I call it.
And then my siblings also think they’re entitled to some of the non-existent inheritance. So many selfish people in my family…
I’d say that if all you want to do is scare the shit out of some scientists in Antarctica you probably only need 1 polar bear
Yup, and there’s a lot less risk of complete disruption to the normal food chain. One polar bear will eventually die, a dozen will probably take over.
or a dog
Nah let’s really confuse them. A lion.
nah, it’d freeze to death too fast
Antarctica compatible fursuit of a lion
Spray-paint a polar bear orange and stick a mane on it. Confusing and scary.
I’ve recently learned that bears absolutely love cocaine. I’m sure that’s relevant here somehow.
Thats why polar bears have white coats
They’re actually clear coats with hollow fur, which means they always have a way to consume said cocaine. They’ve basically evolved to be addicts.
I thought they had white coats because they take their methamphetamine production lab very seriously.
Pretty sure they are just rolling around in cocaine all day, hence why they are the most feared of the bears. Constantly off their head
Would work until the penguin pop. is too small and then they start dying out again
Listen to this. How about we get a big boat, put the surviving penguins inside and ship them to the Artic!
So then part of the program needs to be penguin Viagra to keep the numbers up
Crude dark matter oil should do the job.
Penguin spanish fly.
I’m almost mad at myself for not making this joke originally
would have to be quite a few bears to avoid heavy inbreeding
Apparently it is 12 creatures, 6 male and 6 female, that is needed for a genetically diverse enough group to repopulate.
That depends entirely on what creature you’re talking about.
A couple of birth defects wouldn’t matter much if you’re walking around a penguin buffet. They’d be fine.
No, you must keep the bloodline pure.
Okay, McPoyle.
Sounds reasonable.
